Our Homeschool and Family Life

How to Communicate Better with Your Children

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Communication is one of the most important aspects of any relationship, including the one you have with your children. Communicating is different from talking because it involves a lot of explaining why you feel the way you do and even more listening to how the other person feels and why. Today, I would like to share some tips on How to Communicate Better with Your Children based on my personal experience. What I mean by children here is children especially the teens to the adults

Parents who communicate efficiently have a closer relationship with their children. It helps you get to know each other better and it shows your kids that you really do love them and care about what’s going on in their life. In addition, good communication with children will also teach them the communication skills they will need as they grow up

Unfortunately, the busy life of the modern family lifestyle often takes away the qualified communication among the family members. Everyone is usually busy with the electronic devices and personal matters so that the deep and amount of communication is much lesser than the olden days. The existence of smartphones, tablets, television, and video games will usually make the people close to us far away and the people far away become closer. This fact also changes the relationship between the family members.

Before we go through the tips on how to communicate better with your children, I would like to share some parenting teen books you might want to check out

How to Communicate Better with Your Children

Here are six ways to communicate better with your children:

Be yourself

Be yourself not just a parent when talking to your kids about their day. If something they say reminds you of something you went through at their age, share the story. Talk about what went on with you today and be honest. If you got mad over something, say so and talk about how you solved the problem. When you open up and talk to your kids like you would anyone else, it encourages them to do the same.

Don't push

Don’t push your kids to talk to you. That drives them away faster than anything. Instead, be ready to take a few minutes to listen when they are ready to talk. To help initiate the conversation, try to always be available during the time your child tends to open up the most. Ask questions that help you understand the story better but don’t push to find out how your child feels about it. That will come out eventually.

Be focus

Give your child your undivided attention. If you don’t, they will shy away from talking to you because it makes them feel like they’re not important enough to get all of your attention. If you’re absolutely too busy to talk about something important to them at that moment, make it a point to do so before bedtime if at all possible.

Respect

Parenting in the past and today is not the same in all ways, especially for us with the eastern culture. Children in the past had to respect their parents in anyway, but today's parents will need to give respect to children to certain levels to get engaged with them. Even when you feel completely disagree. Well, you have to be yourself, but you will still need to respect them by listening thoroughly. Don't just show disagreement extremely. On the other hand, try to solve something with them wisely. Don't be too critical.

Use Several Means or Tools

You can be more creative to communicate with children. Direct oral conversation is the best way to do that, but using the mobile phone or messenger (if they have access to the gadget or the computer) is also another way to maintain the daily conversation. For example, if they don't live with you, you still can communicate. What I want to say here is that communication can take different ways and you can use them to maintain the relationship with children.

If you stay with children, you can stare into their eyes, even when you don't talk. It will show them how focused you are. Show your love through your eyes. As I said in the beginning, communication is different from talking. Gestures can show this as well.

Habit and process

Communication is a habit. It is very challenging (but not impossible) to fix a “problematic” communication habit with children when they are growing up already. Therefore, it is suggested to start good communication habit with children as early as possible and maintain it. However, it is not impossible to fix if there is a problem or problems, but it will need some process. You cannot expect it will fix instantly.

Being a parent can be difficult but when you learn how to communicate effectively with your children, it makes the job a lot easier.

Conversation Ideas for Homeschool Teens

I would like to share a checklist of conversation ideas you can use with your homeschool teens. It has several topics you can use to increase the critical thinking and communication purpose. Please follow the procedure bellow to download

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